What is microlearning? Examples and Best Practices 2024

Do you analyze the overall employee performance every year? You should. Without a proper learning strategy and a platform to upskill your employees, things can get quite messy. With a rapidly evolving market, innovation is the key to securing the future of your business. This is why professionals like HR, L&D experts, and Customer Success Managers are revolutionizing workplace learning by implementing the best practices of microlearning in business. 

According to the research, almost 80% of the employees shared a positive experience with the knowledge gained through microlearning courses. So what exactly is microlearning? Let’s dive into this blog to get a better understanding of microlearning, its benefits, and the best practices to enhance the learning experience of your employees. 

What is microlearning?

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

—Albert Einstein

Microlearning is a trending (Gen-Z) learning strategy utilized by organizations to enhance the learning experience of end users through bite-sized training, typically in the form of short modules. As per Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve concept, the microlearning method enables learners to retain digestible information, as large chunks of information can be quite challenging to grasp quickly. With that in mind, you should prepare a concise learning module, allowing learners to memorize small chunks of information and revisit them over time.

Whether you are an HR professional, an L&D expert, or an instructional designer, this approach would help you to understand the learner’s constraints and meticulously prepare the module, fostering a continuous learning culture at the workplace. The primary goal of microlearning is to provide learners with precise and accurate information, allowing them to understand and apply the skills in real-world situations. 

Now that you have the gist of microlearning, let’s talk about the benefits of microlearning.

Top 5 Benefits of Microlearning 

Continuity

As the microlearning approach fosters continuous learning by delivering bite-sized modules/lessons, learners get the opportunity to continuously gain knowledge and stay up-to-date as per industry standards. 

Since the microlearning method largely contributes to a workplace culture that values continuous learning and progression, several organizations vow to indulge in this practice, believing that it is an integral part of organizational and personal growth.

Flexibility

One of the major benefits of microlearning is the flexibility and convenience of learning. As a student or a working professional, you gain the benefit of conducting a microlearning session from anywhere, anytime, using any mobile or computing device to access the modules.

Moreover, the bite-sized modules capture the learner’s attention, allowing them to grasp the information in the easiest way possible. This prevents information overload, thus keeping the learners in a loop and excited to learn more.

Easy Integration

With the latest advancements in technology, you can seamlessly integrate microlearning into your business platform. You can integrate microlearning into the training programs or learning management systems (LMS), and constantly update the modules as per the user’s requirements.

Technology is an evergreen beast that evolves every day, catering to the needs of users. This has made things easier for professionals seeking to create compelling microlearning lessons to enhance employee upskilling. 

Cost-Effectiveness

The microlearning approach emerges as a cost-effective method utilized in streamlining and defining the learning content. The nature of this method encourages organizations to prepare targeted learning modules for their audience.

As this approach consumes less time, effort, and resources, your organization can seamlessly integrate the microlearning method into the learning platform, allowing employees to engage in meaningful learning with minimal disruptions. 

Real-Time Application

When you enforce meaningful learning methods in business, employees get to acquire new skills that are useful in the long run. With focused and digestible lessons, the learners get to promptly apply the gained knowledge in day-to-day activities.

This is one of the key benefits of microlearning, that allows learners to quickly transition from learning to applying the skills in real-life situations. It not only prepares the employees to leverage their skills at the workplace but also promotes their personal development. 

Microlearning Best Practices 

As microlearning continues to dominate the e-learning trends in the market, your business needs to keep up with the best microlearning practices. 

To make things easier, I have put together a list of things you should keep in mind while preparing effective microlearning courses for your employees: 

Understand your learners

Understanding the target audience is the most crucial part of the content development process. Identify ways to create meaningful content and analyze potential colleagues or learners who could benefit from the prepared module. Get into the depth of the topic and think from the learner’s point of view. This would help you prepare spot-on microlearning content for your teammates.

Find your outcome

Now that you have analyzed your target users, set a single learning outcome from the microlearning module. This would help you prepare engaging content modules, specific to the user’s point of view. Analyzing the end result of the course would enable you to walk them through the process and streamline your content creation process. 

Be precise

The general thumb rule of the microlearning method is to prepare a lesson content of under 7–10 minutes. On a typical workday, most employees can dedicate approximately 20 minutes to learning and development. Keeping that in mind, you should prepare microlearning courses, ensuring that learners can skim the content and take clear takeaways from the course module. 

Sound more relatable

When you divulge an unfamiliar subject, you must ensure to include real-world scenarios and case studies to help learners relate to the content. This not only helps the learners understand the scenarios and relate to the topic but also strengthens their knowledge retention. 

Keep it mobile-friendly

Microlearning and mobile learning go hand-in-hand. It is not a coincidence that these two complement each other. With a large portion of the audience using mobile phones for their convenience, it is important to consider their demands while designing the microlearning courses. Build user-friendly modules with an easy-to-access interface.  

How to choose the best microlearning tool online?

With eLearning becoming an asset to enhance the training experience at the workplace, you should consider all the crucial factors while choosing an eLearning authoring tool, as it would help you create engaging microlearning courses for your coworkers. Wondering how to find the best tool online? Worry not! Your research into finding the best tools ends here. Ditch the traditional learning methods and reshape how your business learns through microlearning! 

From professional HR and L&D experts to customer success managers and instructional designers, we, at Calibr.ai offer an e-learning platform that allows you to engage and design meaningful microlearning learning modules. 

Deliver bite-sized content as per the learner’s requirements with our AI-powered course authoring platform, Calibr Craft. Utilize our pre-made templates and drag-and-drop builder to create a seamless microlearning course module within minutes. Book a LIVE demo and learn how to build your own microlearning course now!

FAQs

What is microlearning?

Microlearning is a strategic training method that helps you cut to the chase and prepare brief lesson modules, delivering the necessary information for the learners.

Why is microlearning an important platform for corporate learners?

Microlearning is a continuous learning approach that allows your employees to gain the required knowledge in a bite-sized manner. This helps them understand the concept more easily and retain the information for the future.

How can I improve microlearning modules?

Understand your employees' concerns, establish guidelines, gamify the learning process, design a user-friendly platform, and keep track of employee performance. 

How long is the microlearning module?

Generally, the microlearning modules are 7–10 minutes. You can prepare short modules and deliver precise information to the employees, or break down the information if you can’t fit the entire lesson in a 10-minute module.

Can I use Calibr to create my own microlearning lesson?

Of course! You can utilize our AI-powered course authoring platform, Calibr Craft, to design interactive microlearning modules with engaging visuals and presentations. You can even use Calibr for employee upskilling, knowledge training, customer training, partner training, and enterprise training.